ALA Booklist

Lucas' entire family has died, one by one, of tuberculosis, known as consumption in the mid-1800s. Wandering through the Connecticut countryside in grief, Lucas ends up becoming the new apprentice to Dr. Uriah M. Beecher, also the local dentist, apothecary, barber, and undertaker. Lucas' new community is being decimated by consumption, and the local people want to try a technique rumored to work: digging up the remains of the first family member to die, removing and burning the heart, and breathing in the smoke. Dr. Beecher is certain this is useless at best, but Lucas feels sure it is worth a try. DeFelice skillfully gives readers enough historical information to see the reasoning behind the macabre practice and creates in Lucas a flesh and blood boy going through a most difficult time. Hand this title to students who have been assigned historical fiction and consider olden times to be boring. (Reviewed Oct. 1, 1996)

Horn Book

Orphaned Lucas Whitaker has lost his family to consumption, the scourge of the mid-nineteenth century, and stumbles into an apprenticeship with Doc Beecher, a rare college-trained physician. The pace of this fine piece of historical fiction is brisk in spite of a wealth of detail that not only establishes the setting but exposes beliefs and attitudes of the day regarding health, hygiene, and witchcraft.

Kirkus Reviews

Science and superstition clash over a macabre 19th-century folk remedy for tuberculosis in this tale of an orphaned farm lad taken on by a skeptical apothecary. After his entire family is lost to consumption,'' Lucas numbly wanders the Connecticut countryside, washing up at last in the home of Uriah M. Beecher, self-describeddoctor, dentist, apothecary, barber, and, when all else fails, undertaker.'' Beecher exercises each of his functions on various townsfolk as Lucas, an enthralled student, looks on. They part company, though, over a widespread rumor: that the first in a family to die of consumption rises up at night to draw the life from others, and that burning the heart of the ``undead'' one, breathing its smoke and eating its ashes, will cure the sick and confer immunity. Lucas, troubled not just by his argument with Beecher (whose own ideas about disease are quite modern-sounding), but by the thought that he might have saved at least some of his own family, makes a vulnerable protagonist, as DeFelice (Lostman's River, 1994, etc.) conveys with feeling how desperation and ignorance can lend plausibility to the wildest tales. Despite the stock cast, her point is well made; the inclusion of corpses and exhumations, though not described in detail, adds—for some readers—an appealingly grisly touch. Foreword and afterword. (Fiction. 10-13)"

School Library Journal

Gr 4-7--In 1849, a 12-year-old orphan becomes an apprentice to a kind physician and must choose between applying limited medical knowledge or following macabre superstition. A potent picture of the times. (Aug. 1996)